This program profile describes a restructure of the PhD exam intended to enhance graduate-level instruction and advisement within the Rhetoric and Composition program at Georgia State University. We explain how a mix of institutional constraints and mentorship opportunities drove revisions to our doctoral exams and processes of doctoral…

The need for English and literacy curriculum to connect with young people's lifeworlds to build bridges and frames of reference that connect traditional English curriculum with digital texts and literacies, are increasing priorities in curriculum frameworks in Australia and elsewhere. This paper reports on a project in which the authors worked…

A heuristic approach to explaining of the Black-Scholes option pricing model in undergraduate classes is described. The approach draws upon the method of protocol analysis to encourage students to "think aloud" so that their mental models can be surfaced. It also relies upon extensive visualizations to communicate relationships that are…

This article describes how an experienced instructional designer thinks about and uses learning theories to inform instructional design decisions. It uses a vision metaphor to provide a simple heuristic framework for identifying the nature of instructional problems and relating different types of problems to useful theoretical perspectives,…

Critical thinking alone is reactive, in that it lacks the creative elements necessary for social progress. Accordingly, the author has developed the CoRT (Cognitive Research Trust) program to teach the two aspects of perception: breadth (developing a perceptual map) and change (using the map to discover solutions). (TE)

The syntagmatic paradigmatic model is a distributed, memory-based account of verbal processing. Built on a Bayesian interpretation of string edit theory, it characterizes the control of verbal cognition as the retrieval of sets of syntagmatic and paradigmatic constraints from sequential and relational long-term memory and the resolution of these…

Discussion of several modes of understanding in the cognitive approach to information processing focuses on heuristic (discovery-based) scientific understanding. Topics covered include how students seeking heuristic understanding in a process-oriented school library media program look at information, use preconceptions to guide their searches,…

One of the strengths of the Pennsylvania Council of Teachers of Mathematics (PCTM) is that it gives mathematicians and mathematics educators the opportunity to exchange and contribute to each other's professional growth. The topic for each yearbook is chosen to coincide with the annual PCTM meeting. This 1986 yearbook contains 17 articles related…